William Styron

William Clark Styron Jr. was born on June 11, 1925, in Newport News, Virginia. After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II, Styron graduated from Duke University, where he began writing Southern Gothic fiction under the mentorship of William Blackburn.

His debut novel 'Lie Down in Darkness' (1951) won the Rome Prize, instantly establishing his reputation. In 1967, Styron published 'The Confessions of Nat Turner', a harrowing fictionalized first-person account of the 1831 Virginia slave rebellion, which won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

In 1979, Styron published 'Sophie\'s Choice', an unforgettable Holocaust tragedy exploring human guilt, survival, and moral horror, which won the National Book Award and was adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Meryl Streep. In 1990, his searing personal memoir 'Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness' broke societal taboos around clinical depression. He died on Martha's Vineyard on November 1, 2006.